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Introspection Today: Part 1

29-4-2016

When I look at people in a very general fashion, I cannot distrust them. It is like I have begun to run through their veins, I speak out their words and I erupt from their lips, a joyful moan. I remember reading about a girl who absolutely hated second generation middle-aged people’s butts because them, she peculiarly points out, had the potential of squeezing into every creak and corner of a jam-packed metro. I could only respond, ‘man I have no sense of private space’.

We do not, more or less think philosophically about disgust or love which we tend to feel around crowded places. But I say, the whole experience engrosses me the most. Just as I’ve loved certain smiles and conversations, on the other hand, I’ve also wished a lot of people, per say, chewing or giggling in a certain manner around me to instantly drop dead. But that is the peculiarity of society, it recognizes insanity only if it sustains through time. A little murderous or incestuous thought, here and there and I’ll tell you Freud must have had a hard time in studying the psyche and how to classify it as extraordinary. For Lewis Carroll is right, it has always been dark and as it amounts to it, ‘we all are mad here’.

If you are disgusted by my opinions, I am certain that you’re unaware of your unconscious mind. Mine used to play tricks on me all the time, until recently when I decided to give it a head on, we are on peace for now. Unconscious mind must look like your mysterious orient, against your reasonable structured mind (Edward Said will appreciate the joke) but that does not mean you must lock it away and keep it in bounds (as far as you can help it, I mean I get it that it is called unconscious for some reason). The effect is to make peace with it or simply, just let it breathe. Most people cringe at dark thoughts that ought to be associated with unconscious mind, yet it is children, Freud associates with Id…yes, our very own angels (Id derives of unconscious parts of our psyche). No wonder, my parents still don’t take me seriously.

But I must not confuse you with the binary of reasonable and unreasonable or perhaps, dark and light. It is a dangerous trap that society creates. But how can I blame you, I came out of this entanglement, very recently. I was thinking about my position in the society and found myself in the middle at almost all levels. I belong to middle class, I remain neither happy nor too sad and lastly, I am neither too masculine nor too feminine. Other trivial things I have excused. In conclusion, I realized (which is a very simple idea actually but yet simple ideas are the one which remain out of reach) that everybody ought to be at middle more or less depending upon the things they are competing with. A beggar can be richer than a person in utter debt and yet he can be poorer than his friends who perhaps, earn more than him. So ratios and numbers and other blahs that people like me try not to get entangled in, is what I finally concluded–decides the middle. You can be in middle anywhere.

But then, I asked my friend (in the worst possible articulation) as to what does she think about this whole affair?

‘Yeah but binaries are social construct’

Sure I went into a trance. It is not like I didn’t know what she was saying but she absolutely did startle my inner world. The world was new again. And I was once again, unsure of the principles I live by.

Actually, her and my thought spectrum were not as far as she had thought. For truly, I too had concluded that beggar is neither rich nor poor. And thus relativity occurs due to certain constructions in the society that must force me to see in a certain manner.

Well, I’m sorry if your head hurts. Mine hurts too but I am used to such introspections.

Unconscious minds sure are dark and mysterious places simply because they are out of reach in comparison to the conscious mind, nonetheless they are a construct and not somatic in nature, therefore, it is important for us to not categorize them as unnecessary and unreasonable.

Dreams seem unreasonable precisely because they do not work on the system of boundaries or binaries. Freud notes on Id:

‘…contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out…there is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation…nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time’

For a long time, I used to wake up in dreams only to observe that the person moving with certain awareness of the metaphysicality of a dream is someone who characterize herself as me, is not actually me. I know—weird? Exactly. This person was a personification of Id that did such deeds in my dreams that my conscious mind ran away with its tail between its legs. But I am certainly not joking, I could not (with complete decisiveness) associate with that person in my dream yet I also cannot deny that the person of the dream was indeed me.

However, I did try to conciliate with this dream phantom of Id. I made a point to accept it and I kid you not, it very well worked. Now whenever, I have such dreams, I no longer feel the division. I feel completely united within my desires and reason.

As I positively look back at the history of puritanism and of all the matter that must decide my heaven-hell outgoing, I go onto give out a heartiest chuckle.